“It’s what you were given,” Gore confirms, drawing my attention.
My gaze lifting back to him to find his eyes having seemingly never left me at all.
“She can do it,” I tell him, the others around the table still sitting and eating in quiet, listening, waiting.
“I have no doubts,” Gore replies, our eyes still locked, his face shadowed in the low lighting.
Seconds tick by, my heart hammering, and I have the urge to blink, to clear my vision as it starts to cloud over. A million things running through my head, but I don’t look away from him, not until I hear my name, fromhermouth.
“Billy,” Penelope whispers from the open doorway at my back, a chill slicing up the nape of my neck like a rusty blade, “I did a bad thing.”
Chapter 9
BILLY
Ifeel it.
Every eye in the room turning to look at her, all of them before I do, my eyes still on Gore, but his expression is unreadable. Something so well practised, I wonder if he ever shows emotion, if he evencan,even if it’s only ever in the quiet, in the dark, with his wife.
It’s Tolly who gives it away.
The look of surprise on his face when I finally blink my gaze from Gore, his silver eyes wide like saucers. Rune is the first to smile, like he, on the other hand, is very unsurprised by whatever it is he’s seeing.
But it’s Bram that has me finally turning towards her, his formally spoken words, “You’re dripping blood on the hardwood,” he pauses dramatically, too long passing before he finishes, “it’s antique.”
Her pale skin is painted in streaks of red, long dark hair in wet mattes sticking to her neck and shoulders, and just as Bramsaid, claret drips from her fingers, pooling on the floor at her wet feet.
“Penelope,” Rune sing-songs, clear glee in his tone, “you look simply striking in red.” He chuckles darkly at his own words causing the skin on the nape of my neck to prickle, but I don’t bother telling him to shut the fuck up.
Instead, I’m moving without conscious thought, and all too quickly my fingers are closing around her long neck, my thumb digging into the bone at the corner of her jaw, her breath sucking in sharply as I crane her head back. Leaning in, the tip of my nose sweeping through the sticky blood on hers, I squeeze gently on her windpipe, her hands staying by her sides as she looks up at me with big charcoal brown eyes.
“Why are you up?” my words come out a low whisper, my teeth gnashing together at the thought of her being alone inside this house.
Penelope stares into my eyes, our breaths mingling, noses grazing, and it takes everything in me not to crush our mouths together, to ram my cock into her tight little cunt. I don’t care where we are or who’s watching.
She swallows beneath my palm, plump lips parting, “You were gone.”
So simple.
So pure.
Soinnocent.
A smile threatens to curl my mouth, but I bite it back, keeping my expression blank. Instead, lifting one eyebrow slowly, I glare at her in silence, waiting for something more, somethingtrue.
Penelope Hart is a beautiful liar.
“And?” I finally question, too many long seconds stretching between us, too much silence in the room around us.
She looks up at me, those big eyes wide, lashes fluttering before she swallows beneath my palm, hard.
“A man-”
“Who?”
“I don't know,” she snaps back, curling her top lip, and for the first time since I found her again, I feel that angry fire she tries to bury deep down inside flare to life.
I see blood smeared on her canine, before her tongue quickly licks it off, and my cock grows even harder as she glares up at me, heated irritation boiling both her temper and mine.
